disobedience part 1
Babies good? Only if stubbornness, selfishness, willfulness, disobedience are good.
I never cease to be amazed by the depth and breadth of opinion that exists in the literate world. So many basic things I think can easily be understood by common sense alone and, for those who care to check, are confirmed by studies into human behaviour, are still outside the realm of understanding for many.
Take my recent run-in with a blogger who claims “we all deserve to die”. Not that we’re inevitably going to die and we should accept it, but that we are such innately ‘bad’ creatures that we deserve to die. That, apparently, includes babies. Can you see my hackles rising?
I am the mother of a 16-month old child. She is everything but peaceful – she has an insatiable curiosity and endless reservoirs of energy that confound my sleepy soul. She is driven by one need – comfort. If she is tired, hungry, bored or hot, she has no way to resolve the situation without help. She cannot always fall asleep at the time that suits me. I quickly found out that this is usually due to teething pain (ever had toothache with no pills and tried to sleep?), natural developmental or growth spurts, or some other situation that she is unable to resolve without assistance (she has yet to learn how to open the drawer to put extra blankets on). I said sleep, she didn’t sleep. Does this make her selfish and disobedient? Does this make her sinful?? In my, so far, 16 months of parenthood, I have yet to stumble upon one example of her ‘inconvenient’ behaviour that doesn’t have a rational explanation.
Ignorant parenting in today’s society is inexcusable. There are numerous support mechanisms, publications and chat rooms to help all parents investigate and appropriately meet their children’s needs. Sure, it’s tough, it’s exhausting and sometimes the answer takes a long time to come. But with the internet at your fingertips, there’s very little you can’t find that other parents have gone through and found solutions for. Never write off your personal inconvenience to simplistic, petty and illogical ‘disobedience’. You do the child and yourself a disservice, and ignore very real parenting requirements.
